Alabama

Slaying started with a pearl

It began with a pearl, plucked from an oyster, and handed to a customer as a gift at Wintzell's Oyster House on a Friday night in October of last year.

It's expected to end when a Mobile jury decides whether later that same night, Jennifer Strickland committed manslaughter when she shot and killed her fiance, Derek Driskell, with a .357-caliber Magnum revolver.

As Strickland's trial got under way Monday before

Mobile County Circuit Judge John Lockett, attorneys on both sides painted a picture of a young Satsuma couple, who, despite a fiery domestic history, planned to marry.

While Strickland and Driskell ate and drank at the Airport Boulevard restaurant, jurors were told, an employee gave Strickland, 28, a small pearl just extracted from an oyster.

Driskell, 32, was angered by the gesture and threatened to beat up the employee, according to defense attorney James Lackey.

Shortly afterward, a melee between Strickland and Driskell ignited inside the restaurant, jurors were told. Driskell dragged Strickland out of a restroom and across the dining room floor, then outside to his truck, where they fought some more until she broke free and attempted to run back in.

As Lackey described it, Strickland held onto the restaurant's front door, with Driskell pulling on her legs so hard that her body was parallel to the ground.

When the fighting finally was stopped, Driskell headed to the Bayou Avenue home that he shared with Strickland.

Strickland "stayed out" with friends and continued to drink, the prosecutor said.

Around midnight, Strickland demanded that her friends take her home.

"Her friends, maybe not so wisely, gave in," Phillips said.

His client's intention, Lackey told jurors, was to get her own car and leave without another confrontation. But when she got there, Driskell stormed out.

They began to re-enact the scene at the restaurant, Lackey suggested, with Driskell dragging Strickland across the ground by her feet, across the concrete driveway and into the house.

Within minutes, Driskell lay dying on his kitchen floor, with a large-caliber bullet lodged in his lungs, jurors were told.

According to Lackey, jurors will hear later this week that Driskell -- "extremely jealous, extremely controlling" -- pulled a revolver from off the kitchen counter and threatened to kill Strickland, then placed the gun into her hands and told her she would have to kill him if she thought she was going to leave that night.

Moments later, Lackey said, they were on the floor, struggling over the gun.

Then, the attorney said, "she doesn't know why, but it went off."

The gun certainly went off, Phillips agreed, but he said it was fired at some distance from Driskell, who was shot in the back.

What happened that night, the prosecutor said, "was not at all consistent with an accident."

Lackey told jurors they would see proof of multiple bruises caused to his client that night on her "arm, leg, hip and foot" by Driskell's abusive attack.

"This woman was fighting for her life," he said.

After only about an hour of testimony Monday, the trial was expected to resume today before Lockett.